Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/420

414 and Don Leonardo Bravo was led out to death at once. The son, learning of this, at once ordered all the prisoners to be liberated, saying, "I wish to put it out of my power to avenge my parent's death, lest in the first moments of grief the temptation should prove irresistible."

Can you find in the history of any people an example of greater magnanimity than that? There were heroes in those days! Our fathers fought no more fiercely in the American Revolution, nor prolonged the struggle with less encouragement, than these fathers of Mexican independence.

Soon after the death of Morelos Congress was disbanded, and the people no longer had a central point upon which to focus their gaze. But its principles lived! It had done its work in teaching the masses the first lesson of freedom!

From the year 1816, through 1820, Juan de Apodaca, Count of Venadito, represented the royal power in New Spain. His mild rule was admirably adapted to the conciliation of the dissatisfied Indians and Creoles.

In 1817 the disbanded rebels received new encouragement from an unexpected source. There was in Spain a guerilla chief named Xavier Mina, who had fought against the Bonapartes, and who, having failed in exciting a revolution, fled to Mexico with many adherents. Landing on the coast with three hundred and fifty men, he successively defeated different parties sent against him, and on one occasion took a fortified hacienda, with a booty of one hundred and forty thousand dollars. Not meeting with the aid he had anticipated from the Independents, he was at last driven to bay in the central part of the state of Guanajuato, where, overwhelmed by the numerous forces sent against him, he fell, bravely fighting to the last. Thus terminated the short, though glorious, career of this